Datameer Brings Hadoop’s Processing Power to Social Gaming Analytics

As social gaming practices spread throughout the larger gaming industry, we’re seeing more companies show up offering heavy-duty analytics packages for serious developers to track every move made by millions of users. Datameer is the latest, with an offering built on Apache Hadoop, an open-source, heavy-duty data processing framework.

Datameer’s offering is basically a spreadsheet on steroids, built to juggle terabytes of information. Any game that uses common web log files can feed into Datameer, after which an analyst process the data and examine metrics like engagement with specific mechanics and monetization by player groups. The below slides give an example of the feel of the program:

After a base payment of $12,000 per year for Datameer, it costs $3 per gigabyte. Datameer expects larger monthly charges to run up to $20,000 per month, giving an idea of the scale modern gaming analytics operates at.

Social game developers are among Datameer’s target audience, but CEO Stefan Groschupf, a veteran of several companies built on Hadoop, says traditional gaming companies are also looking for analytics tools for their web-based games. “They all understand that the future is in understanding better what happens in their game,” he says. “They’ve gone beyond focus groups.”